Among the laws found in the book of Devarim for the first time are those concerning the sociopolitical organization of the new Jewish state. They include the rights and duties of kings, proper conduct of war and the appointment of law enforcers. The reason for the appearance of these laws specifically now is obvious; they are among the laws that would become relevant only when the Jews entered the land, and thus did not need to be taught until right before their entry. As mentioned earlier, many commentators have found this to be the organizing principle with regard to which laws are chosen to be included in the final book of the Torah.89See Chapter 2, page 37.
Yet there is another possible reason for the late appearance of the laws of statecraft. If economics is often described as the “dismal science,” politics may, in fact, be an even more dismal discipline still. Although this central area of life must be addressed in the Torah, it is likely done reluctantly. Whatever system and laws are set up in the sociopolitical realm will inevitably be misused – that being the nature of the beast.
There are many ways in which this reluctance to set up a sociopolitical system is felt. In our first volume, we discussed the intrinsic problem of human political power and why true Jewish leaders come to leadership with great ambivalence. We wrote that these reticent leaders understand that power over others is suited, ultimately, only for God. Only He can truly know what is good for others and how to effect that good.90Redeeming Relevance in Genesis, pp. 114–119. Still, He created man in such a way that he would need to build societies with human leaders. And as many political philosophers have pointed out, the great evil that comes out of political power is nevertheless outweighed by the good that results from it.
The Torah’s ultimate ideal is a state in which people are enlightened enough not to need the leadership of others.91See Redeeming Relevance in Numbers, pp. 58–59. But ideals should not be confused with the need for guidelines for the practical, “real” world until and unless the ideals can be realized. Therefore, it was essential for the Torah to give us some guidance on how to create the best parameters for the administration of a state.
What’s Wrong with a King?
Many commentators have already noted the strange language that introduces the commandment to appoint a king (Devarim 17:14). It is first couched against the usually questionable backdrop of the Jews wanting to be like all the nations around them. Moreover, the Torah mandates the appointment of a king only if the Jews actually request it.92See Ha’amek Davar, ibid. From at least the time of the Talmud, many careful readers of the Torah have seen this, among other things, as a sign of the Torah’s ambivalence – or worse – toward a Jewish king.93See Sanhedrin 20b, which engenders a debate among commentators on the books of Devarim and II Shmuel. See also Eric Nelson, The Hebrew Republic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), which traces the influence of this tradition on proto-Enlightenment Christian thinkers who begin their critique of contemporary monarchy based upon it.
The Torah’s hesitation concerning a Jewish king anticipates an inherent problem with having one, and foresees that this problem can be only mitigated but not removed. Consequently, it establishes limits on what often leads to abuse; first and foremost, money and women. The Torah also proscribes a third item, the accumulation of too many horses, ostensibly aimed at limiting contact with the primary source of this commodity, Israel’s cradle and nemesis, Egypt.94See Redeeming Relevance in Exodus, Chapter One. Moreover, since horses were the ancient equivalent of heavy weaponry, this could well have had the ancillary benefit of controlling the potential hubris that could occur when leaders have more weaponry than they need.
In addition to what a king should not do (or possess) comes an extra requirement of what he needs to do. He must always keep God’s demands in mind, and in order to facilitate this he is required to carry a Torah scroll wherever he goes. We will return to these safeguards, both the do’s and the don’ts, but we must first understand why the Torah was so concerned in the first place.
The place to begin is with the crowning of the first Israelite king. Significantly, it is several centuries after receiving the Torah until the Jewish polity actually appoints a monarch.95See Haamek Davar on Devarim 17:14. Netziv is one of the few classical commentators who addresses this issue head on. This in and of itself seems to be an indication of the Jewish tradition’s ambivalence toward monarchy. But if reticence is only implicit up to that point, the establishment of a united monarchy brings outright opposition from the Torah’s then main exponent, the prophet Shmuel.
In fact, the monarchy’s initial implementation in the book of Shmuel is one of the Bible’s most dramatic moments. When the Jewish people come to ask Shmuel for a king, his reaction is nothing short of hysterical: He tells them of the near-slavery that a king will impose upon them and how their request is, in any case, a great sin (I Shmuel 8).Were his words not so vivid we could say that the special effects of conjuring up a storm in the midst of the dry season speak even louder (I Shmuel 12). In any event, the esteemed prophet’s reaction makes it hard to see the establishment of monarchy as a welcome event, so much so that those rabbis and commentators who defend monarchy are hard-pressed to find an explanation for Shmuel’s vehement opposition.
Essentially, their answer is that Shmuel’s concerns were localized to the specifics involved. They claim that the motivations of the group that came to Shmuel were the real problem, not the establishment of a monarchy per se (Sanhedrin 20b).96See Michael Walzer, In God’s Shadow (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), Chapter 4, which does a good job of tracing the rival Jewish traditions about the monarchy. This theory is certainly possible, but it is not the most obvious reading of the story.
Based on Shmuel’s own words, the brunt of the debate about the desirability of a monarch is actually about whether such an office shows a lack of trust in God. After all, the main role of a king is to protect his nation and advance its economic interests. Did God not already do that for the Jews? Indeed, in “consoling” Shmuel, God reinforces this idea by telling him that “it is not you they are rejecting but rather Me” (I Shmuel 8:7). 97Of course, this type of reasoning can be taken ad absurdum. Should the Jews not plow and sow but rather simply place their faith in God? Although such a line of thinking is not completely foreign to Jewish tradition, it is fairly marginal; see Berachot 35b. See also Rambam's Commentary to the Mishna, Pesachim 4:10, which uses the absurdity of such an idea as a rhetorical flourish. But this is not the final word.
The problem with a Jewish monarchy according to some commentators goes beyond a simple reading of Shmuel’s opposition. For Abarbanel, for instance, the form of government was the true problem. Having been an insider in the Spanish monarchy and also having gone through Spain’s expulsion of the Jews, Abarbanel’s generalized opposition to monarchy is easy to imagine. And not only did he see the weaknesses and failings of several monarchies, he also saw what appeared to be a much better alternative when he immigrated to republican Venice at the height of its glory.
In light of his experiences, Abarbanel understood the Torah to be warning the Jews not to fall into the common trap of thinking that a monarch will provide more effective leadership than a system wherein leadership is shared and can be more easily monitored and checked.98Abarbanel on I Shmuel 8:6. But while Abarbanel correctly looks at the ultimate failure of Biblical Jewish monarchy, his condemnation is somewhat problematic. Even if he is correct in his reading of the historical Jewish monarchy, he fails to explain why the Torah does not at least suggest what he views to be a better type of government.
I believe the Bible had something else in mind. Although we will also examine the Biblical record, we must look broader and deeper than the textual analysis suggested by Abarbanel’s conclusion. Ironically, a broader perspective will show that the Bible’s most critical objection to monarchy is much simpler than Abarbanel’s theory.
But it is not only with Abarbanel that I take issue on this topic. The lack of trust in God which many other commentators have concluded to be the main problem is not without its own difficulties either. Besides looking for lessons relevant to our times, one of the main reasons I am seeking a novel explanation is that a straightforward reading of Shmuel’s critique of not relying upon God’s direct rule makes it doomed from the start. The direct rule of God simply appears to be more than what the Israelites can handle. If so, is there not a more relevant and effective critique that can apply when all states, Jewish or gentile, will necessarily be administered by powerful human leaders? Let us look at the Biblical record more carefully.
Proto-Division of Religion and State
It is obvious that the first king, Shaul, presented a new model for Jewish governance. Less obvious are the many ramifications of the model as viewed through the prophetic lens of the Bible. We are immediately aware that much more than the judges before him, King Shaul is a successful military and political leader. And yet it doesn’t take much analysis to discover that he is also a terribly weak character. We see this in his remarkable unawareness of his own mistakes which, in turn, set the stage for frequent Divine rebuke.
But here the Bible employs a change in the order of things. As opposed to earlier leaders, each time Shaul does something wrong it is neither God nor one of His angels that comes to rebuke him. Rather, the Divine voice needs to be mediated. In this case, it is mediated by the prophet Shmuel, who eventually informs Shaul of God’s decision to replace him. This reaches tragic proportions after Shmuel dies. Finding no other avenue to discover what God wants from him, Shaul feels he has no choice but to conjure Shmuel back from the dead (I Shmuel 28:3–25). In fact, this strange need for mediation with God seems to be part and parcel of the new leadership model Shaul represents, which is epitomized by Michael Walzer’s poignant observation that “henceforth, God’s interests are represented by the prophet.”99Walzer, In God’s Shadow, p. 67.
Even though things would be less dramatic in the subsequent reign of David, the die had already been cast – the externalization of religious criticism that was so clear with Shaul would typify all subsequent kings of Israel and Yehudah. From the best to the worst, Jewish kings would lack the inner voice of God – a voice that was integral to Jewish leadership up until that point. This comes through quite clearly in the lives of several of the earlier leaders, collectively known as the judges.
Israel’s model judge, Gidon, was in frequent conversation with God. Likewise Devorah, another famous judge and prophetess (Shoftim 4:4). This was also clearly the case with the first and last of the judges, Yehoshua and Shmuel (who is considered the last of the judges, even though he is significantly more well known for his role as a prophet), respectively. We don’t know a great deal about many of the minor judges who led the Jewish people between Yehoshua and Shmuel, yet neither do we read about any of them being rebuked by prophets, as would be the case later with the kings.
The judges generally did not receive extended prophecy, but this had little to do with their ability to connect with the Divine. It is more likely a consequence of the relative simplicity of those times. The period of the judges was one of a great repetitive cycle: the Jews failed to live up to their potential, were reminded of their failures by being attacked and consequently subjugated by their enemies, and eventually respond with repentance, which brings about salvation led by a new judge.
Almost never was the judge himself the source of the evil. The spiritual level of the judges generally just reflected that of their followers and, if anything, was a cut above the level of their flock. Thus, we never see among the judges the likes of a Yerav’am, who stops the people from going to the Temple in Jerusalem. Neither do we see a Menashe, who aggressively pushes the people toward idol worship. The Jews and their judges were already intuitively aware of their mistakes, and when things got really bad they turned to God, promising to do better in the future. The main role of the leadership at this time was to help the people with repentance and with their subsequent military deliverance. And this is exactly what the judges did, some better, some worse.
Not so with the kings. Not only did they not help the Jews avoid sin, they were often its cause. Why? We noted that a king’s connection to God was externalized and that he would need to depend on a prophet for feedback. We will now seek to understand what made these new Jewish leaders less connected to God than their predecessors and consequently so much more susceptible to moral corruption.
Who was the judge? As opposed to the king, he was essentially apolitical. He neither sought leadership nor spent significant effort on its administration. He came to fulfill a temporary leadership task and, when it was finished, returned to private life. Even judges such as Yehoshua and Shmuel, who were heavily involved in leadership throughout their lives, did not set up much of an administration and did not seek to establish a coherent state apparatus. Hence, since less was expected from the judge politically, more could be expected spiritually, if for no other reason than he could afford the time and effort required to be a complete and well-integrated religious personality.
The king, however, was a true career man – someone we could describe as a political specialist. Sometimes, as in the case of David and Chizkiyahu, he was also a pious Jew. Other times, as in the case of Menashe, he was a rogue. But in either case he was too preoccupied with everything that goes into running a state to lead a properly focused religious life, not to mention to provide true religious leadership. In the best scenario he would need spiritual oversight. In the worst he would need to be stopped.
As it turns out, the religious oversight of kings came in the new form of the subversive prophet. Being independent of the leadership, the prophet was free to critique it – and, when necessary, even to undermine it. This was a novel development. So long as the leader had also been a prophet, as was the case with the patriarchs, Moshe and the judges, destabilizing Jewish regimes was not at all within the parameters of prophecy. Yet from Shmuel on, this would become a major part of the social and political landscape.
The clear distinction between the kings and the judges on the one hand, and the consistent pattern in the relationship between kings and prophets on the other, shows that it is the very institution of the Jewish monarchy that brought about the need for such an independent religious voice. The establishment of a professional head of state is the reason for the appearance of the subversive prophet. The institution of this type of prophet essentially arose as a system of checks and balances for what could be described as the now secularly focused leaders of the Jewish state.
The absence of prophecy in Jewish kings was not a personal shortcoming. Even the greatest of the kings were largely excluded from receiving prophecy. It is well known that when David marries Batsheva under questionable circumstances, God rebukes him through the prophet Natan rather than appearing to David directly (II Shmuel 12:1–14). Less well known is when David’s other prophet, Gad, comes later on to remind him of his spiritual and moral obligations. While that story, which concerns David’s census, is already recorded in the book of II Shmuel 24:1–13, its later rendition in II Divrei HaYamim 21:8–18 is even more revealing. There David speaks to God, but God only responds through the prophet. Apparently, direct access to God is something even a king of David’s caliber is unable, or perhaps not allowed, to have.
In this context, it should be pointed out that David’s Tehillim, as well as his calls to God in other books of the Bible, are not prophetic. They might display a highly developed sense of religiosity, but that is not the same as being in direct communication with God.
David’s son Shlomo may have been the one exception to this rule.100Shaul also gets a modicum of prophecy at the beginning of his career, but it is couched in curious terms of surprise on his part, as if to say it’s a freak spiritual accident. Another king who is described as receiving prophecy is Yehu (II Melachim 10:30), but Jewish tradition understands that this was not a case of direct prophecy but only one conveyed to him by the prophet Yonah (Seder Olam 19). During at least two points in his career he is addressed directly by God.101See I Melachim 11:9, which states that God appeared to him twice. This presumably refers to I Melachim 3:5–14, 9:2–9. Whether that actually gives him the status of a prophet is less clear. (And, as with his father, authorship of great religious literature has no bearing on this.) Even if we accord Shlomo the standing of a prophet, he still requires spiritual oversight and rebuke from an external source. Though not explicit in the Biblical text, Jewish tradition declares that it is only through the prophet Achiyah that God announces His displeasure to Shlomo and declares that most of the kingdom will be taken away from his heirs (I Melachim 11:11–13).102Although the simple reading of the text could easily be understood here as another example of direct prophecy to Shlomo, various traditional commentators explain that a careful reading indicates otherwise (see, for example, Kli Yakar; Radak; Abarbanel). Even if we were to differ with this explanation and say that this is an exception wherein God speaks His rebuke directly to a king, its exceptionality is reinforced by the surprise of these commentators, who apparently feel forced to understand it as following the general rule. But even if we consider Shlomo a true exception, the general pattern remains the same: the subversive prophet needs to oversee and critique the religious behavior of the civil leader.
The Costs of Professional Leadership
The establishment of a Jewish monarchy came to answer a historical need. We have demonstrated that the judges were less spiritually vulnerable, but there is no escaping the fact that they were also politically less effective. With the exception of Yehoshua, the entire period from Moshe to Shaul is found to have had a largely ineffective, though often more religiously sensitive political leadership. With the advent of the kings, this model was flipped on its head. The king, who needed to concentrate on affairs of state, was less connected to moral imperatives and more insulated from Divine rebuke. In time, this trend only reinforced itself. To the extent that the kings became used to their secular role and depended on the prophets to fill in the spiritual gaps, the secularity of the kings became even more pronounced.
This is not to say that the kings were given a break and that less was expected of them than of other prominent Jews. They were expected to toe the line like any other Jew and, because of their place in the limelight, perhaps even more. They were also expected to use their powers as king to enforce Jewish law and promote its spirit. But all of this was to be done only from the position of a religious layman. Religious leadership was neither required nor expected.
The Jewish king’s exemption from spiritual leadership, however, should be understood as no more than a necessary evil. It is only because a man cannot focus on both the state and the spirit that he was excused from being a religious leader as well. At the same time, falling short of the, albeit impossible, ideal comes at a tremendous cost to the king and to his nation: it is almost impossible for a person to excel at something that is not his main and daily focus. In other words, we become what we do. If we lead troops into battle in order to kill other people – even when necessary and justified – it affects who we become. And this is the very reason why the most outstandingly religious king, David, was not allowed to build the Temple. He had become a warrior king. As such, he was a true hero to his people, but a different type of hero than what was required to build the Temple (I Divrei HaYamim 22:8).
While not every judge was a great role model, there is no question that as a group the judges remained much more loyal to the Torah and its tenets than the kings. And here we have the main reason for Biblical legislation that anticipates the difficulty a king will have in maintaining a proper sense of morality. No doubt the temptations that come from power are a major part of the Torah’s concern as well, but this is far from being its only concern. The king’s overwhelming preoccupation with statecraft and his corresponding inability to attend to the spiritual leadership are, at the very least, as responsible.
The main issue, then, is not with there being only one absolute leader, as Abarbanel suggests. Rather, there is an inherent problem with any professional leader or leaders who, in view of their assignment, must concentrate on statecraft. Although any occupation that becomes the entire, unhealthy focus of one’s life can draw a person away from a Torah lifestyle, the statesman has two additional problems:
(1) Since putting the Torah’s theory into practice on a societal level requires great perseverance and patience, a statesman might be tempted to run things in a more “practical” way than that which the Torah dictates. The king is given broad extra-legal powers by Jewish law for precisely this reason,103See Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Melachim 3:10– 5:3. See also Derashot HaRan, derashah 11, who makes this exact point. He says that the impractical nature of Jewish civil law essentially requires a secular authority with extra-legal powers. but the Torah still limits what the king is allowed to do, and this will inevitably get in the way of a leader who just wants to get the job done.
A good king will by necessity be a workaholic. For even with the best of advisors, a state of just about any size represents a large and multi-faceted enterprise. To oversee it properly requires concerned interest and involvement in many different time-consuming matters.
(2) Being at the helm makes the king an automatic role model. His subjects will naturally look up to him and many will want to emulate him – especially if he is successful. This is particularly dangerous, as a king’s success can sometimes paradoxically be the result of his violating the Torah, as when Shlomo was able to create many beneficial alliances specifically by marrying more wives than he was allowed.
A professional leader who is only indirectly connected to the moral impulse can easily turn into an Achav or a Menashe. Seeing this again and again with the kings of Israel and Yehudah, we get a clear indication that the type of separation of religion and state that was ushered in with the Jewish monarchy comes at a very high cost indeed.
The question of whether or not the Jewish nation can run without the type of professional leader that we have just described might be one of the reasons for the argument between those who feel appointing a king is commanded by God and those who feel it is not. Whatever the resolution to this dispute, the problematic need to separate between religion and state brought to the fore by a king must be noted, even if it cannot completely be stopped. By acknowledging the tradeoffs brought on by a professional leader, as the Bible does, we are in a better position to watch for them and do what we can to mitigate them. Moreover, even if the professionalization of the leadership may be necessary for certain times, the Bible makes it clear that we must never think of it as an ideal.
* * *
We have concentrated on the problems created for the professional statesman and have noted that most professionals will be confronted by similar, if somewhat less intense, challenges. Today, many jobs demand unprecedented amounts of time and involvement, and sometimes keeping the laws of the Torah can present an impediment to the best performance of our duties in the secular environment that characterizes most workplaces. This means that our daily work routines can easily prevent us from being fully integrated religious individuals. And the fact that we don’t have prophets to represent the Divine critique of our actions makes the matter more difficult still.
So what is to be done? The most obvious, though not always practical answer is to limit ourselves to careers and job situations where we won’t be confronted with these challenges. Yet, just as Jewish kings may have been needed in their time, Jewish society, especially in Israel, needs high-powered religious professionals today.
The first task is to be aware of the problem, even as one is not able to live the ideal. This means internalizing that contemporary society is not built in a spiritually ideal fashion. In an ideal society, there would be no professional head of state. And neither would there be professional lawyers or businessmen or architects. In such a society, people would study for and work in these jobs on an ad hoc basis. The judges who served only when they were needed would serve as the model for this. This may sound radical, unrealistic or both, yet it must be placed against the alternative to which we have become all too accustomed.
In an increasingly secularized and specialized society, practitioners are expected to get so involved in their professions that as a result they become amateurs at everything else, including their spiritual lives. In a society modeled on the judges, something would necessarily be lost, just as something was lost with regard to statecraft under the judges. But it still remains preferable. That being said, it also remains largely out of reach.
There are too many forces preventing most of us from living lives uncompromised by the professional requirements of our livelihoods. Unless and until that changes, we need to look at the extra laws of the king as a model for how to rein ourselves in and not allow our professional lives to lead us astray. In the face of the greatest temptations operating in the secular world, we, like the king, must put up extra barriers. And perhaps even more important, like him, we must take the Torah with us wherever we go. Whether it is making sure to read the parashah during one’s commute, or breaking for half an hour in the middle of the day for a daf yomi podcast, it is imperative that we be constantly reminded of who we really are.
Using the guidelines the Torah spells out for the king won’t make us into the modern equivalent of a prophet such as Shmuel or Yeshayahu. The king’s rules were not designed for someone who is able to focus so forcefully on God, but rather for someone with situational impediments which prevent him from living such a life. They can only make us the modern equivalent of a King David, for example. Not bad, when you think about it. Not bad at all.